Some mothers are aborting because their prenatal tests have shown that their unborn child would very likely be born with genetic birth defects.
Prenatal Tests
However, a study has shown that in 50% of cases, the tests are wrong, meaning a healthy baby was aborted.
The New England Center for Investigative Reporting found that the rarer the condition, the higher the rate of false positives, with devastating consequences for women basing an
Abortion decision on the test results.
One study showed that of the 356 women involved, 6.2% of them had a termination based on the test result alone. Illumina, the provider of one test, Verifi, stresses that it "has always emphasised the need for confirmatory testing." The results are sometimes misread, for example, when two obstetricians in Boston sent cell samples from two women who were not pregnant to five different testing companies, 3 of them gave results saying that the women were pregnant with healthy baby girls.
Shockingly, 90% of unborn children that are expected to have Down syndrome are Aborted. There is the potential that many of them are misdiagnosed, and the decision to Abort or save thoese unborn babies lives is being made based on that one test.
The same can be said with the misdiagnosis of a healthy baby which is then born with serious genetic diseases, and the parents are completely unprepared.
We need to do our best to make sure that our tests are correct before we choose to Abort or not.